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The Tree of Liberty

SECOND OPINION

"From the east to the west blow
the trumpet to arms! Through the land let the sound of it flee; Let the
far and the near all unite, with a cheer, In defense of our Liberty
Tree." — Thomas Paine

Last week, Constitutional
conservatives defeated the most recent congressional round of
"gun-control" legislation. This week, in rebuttal, a full-page
advertisement hit newsstands around the country.

Under
the heading, "Open Letter to the National Rifle Association," Handgun
Control, Inc. (HCI), an organization that purports to advocate
gun-control measures ostensibly for reason of public safety, states,
"We hate what guns are doing to our communities, our schools, our
families and, most especially, our children."

"What
guns are doing"? We checked, and there are no guns on death row, in
prison, on parole, or among the FBI's Ten Most Wanted. There are plenty
of sociopaths who have used a variety of weapons to kill their victims.
But that is not a "gun problem," and no amount of "gun control" will
palliate such violence.

HCI claimed, "Everyday we lose 13 children to gun violence in
this country. ... This debate is not about guns. It's about children."
Really? The fact is, 85% of the "children" we lose to "gun violence"
are aged 15 to 19, and drawn from the ranks of the socially
disenfranchised and gang-bangers of nightly news horror.

Of
course, invoking the cause of children is the most tried and true
charade in the left's political almanac. To wit, note Mr. Clinton's
summary of his gun-grab setback: "[Republicans] say we don't care
what's necessary to protect our children." Or his most oft-stated
justification for using the big guns in Yugoslavia: "Our children need
and deserve a peaceful, stable, free Europe."

Columnist
Charley Reese notes, "The neo-totalitarians...follow a fixed pattern.
They create a straw man, demonize the straw man, then frame the
argument as a contest between good and the evil demon." Children v.
guns, in this case.

HCI claimed that not only is
gun-control "about children," but "everyone's right to; life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness'." While the gun debate is not primarily
about "children," HCI did inadvertently hit on the truth: It is about
the relationship between the possession of arms and "life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness."

The Second Amendment
says that an armed public is "necessary to the security of a free
State," and, as UCLA
law professor Eugene Volokh explains, this is the
justification clause to its operative clause, "the right of the people
to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Dr. Volokh's assertion
is sustained in the words of the most notable Founders in their
arguments for our Constitution's ratification in their home states.

"The said Constitution [shall] be never construed to authorize
Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of
conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are
peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms," insisted Samuel Adams
in Massachusetts.

In Pennsylvania, Noah Webster
proclaimed: "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be
disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme
power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the
whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to
any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the
United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can
execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and
constitutional; for they will possess the power."

In
New York, Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 29: "[I]f
circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army
of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of
the people while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all
inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to
defend their rights and those of their fellow citizens."

James
Madison, author of the Bill of Rights, wrote in Federalist No. 26: "The
advantage of being armed...the Americans possess over the people of all
other nations.... Notwithstanding the military establishments in the
several Kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public
resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people
with arms."

In Virginia, Patrick Henry argued:
"The great object is that every man be armed.... Everyone who is able
may have a gun. ... Guard with jealous attention the public liberty.
Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel." George Mason said of the
need to bear arms, "To disarm the people is the best and most effectual
way to enslave them."

These Founders are not
talking about defending individual liberty from foreign invasion — but
from tyranny within.

Justice Joseph Story
(appointed by James Madison) in his "Commentaries on the Constitution"
considered the right to keep and bear arms "the palladium of the
liberties of the republic," which enables the citizenry to deter
tyranny.

Of constitutions and parties, Thomas
Jefferson concluded, "Men by their constitutions are naturally divided
into two parties: 1) Those who fear and distrust the people.... 2)
Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them,
cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe...depository of
the public interest."

In the context of today's
political parties, it is arguably the Sociocrats who distrust the
people. Their solution to the "gun problem" straw man is the
incremental implementation of legislation, which will increasingly
restrict the ownership of arms until which time they are positioned to
replace 20,000 federal, state and local gun laws with one law — no
guns, except perhaps those narrowly defined for sporting purposes. Of
course, their unspoken motive is to disarm the people, rendering them
of necessity at the mercy of the standing army and increasingly, the
police state.

But the Second Amendment was not
written to protect the rights of citizens to hunt and target shoot. It
expressly prohibits government from infringing on our rights to possess
the means to defend against tyranny — enemies foreign and domestic.

Thomas Jefferson said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed
from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants," an
admonition made possible by the right to bear arms of parity with those
of the standing army. If such words seem antiquated, consider these:
"One man with a gun can control 100 without one. ... Make mass searches
and hold executions for found arms." — V.I. Lenin. "If the opposition
disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it
ourselves." — Joseph Stalin. "Political power grows out of the barrel
of a gun." — Mao Tse-Tung.

But today, modern
Sociocrats and their media glitterati have made political fodder of our
Bill of Rights, subverting its promise of freedom and liberty. And
their constituents, fat and lazy on the largess of Bill Clinton's "New
Covenant," line up like lemmings. As Charley Reese concludes,
"Americans who value freedom had better be more concerned about the
gun-control crowd than the criminals. Criminals may want your money;
the neo-totalitarians want your freedom. ... The Founding Fathers
boasted that all Americans were armed. Of course, they governed free
men, not a herd of sheep."

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